


Anger Management

by 221b_hound



Category: Cabin Pressure, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Arthur's understanding people skills, Arthur's unhappy childhood proves useful to saving the day, Gen, Gordon Shappey is a bastard, Martin's anger is self-directed, Past Abuse, Rage, murderous rage, spoilers for Kingsman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 04:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3555839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valentine's device is activated and the crew of MJN are out on the tarmac, having to deal with its devastating effects. Luckily (and also unfortunately) Arthur, who doesn't have an angry bone in his body, is kind of used to dealing with unchecked rage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anger Management

**Author's Note:**

> I've just returned home from seeing Kingsman. I don't have the time to write the fic where Princess Teresa is among those held prisoner in the mountain and MJN have to rescue her and save the world... but this idea suggested itself to me as a quick option to write.
> 
> Don't even ask my about my Harry feels, for they are EPIC.

Douglas was doing the walk-around when it started. Arthur was watching him from the bottom of the stairs, because his mother had asked him, _very firmly_ , to make himself useful by ensuring Douglas did the whole walk around properly this time. Which Arthur thought was unfair because while Douglas did sometimes do the walk around _very quickly_ , he always did it all the way round.

But this time, Douglas got half way around GERTI and then fell into an inexplicable rage. He was yelling and screaming at the ground crew, who had started a rugby scrum for reasons not apparent to Arthur, and looked like joining in. But then he'd seen Arthur and run towards him, yelling and roaring and very red in the face. He looked so much like Arthur's father, Gordon, that instinct had kicked in and Arthur took off at lightning speed, ten paces ahead of the First Officer.

It was a good thing that Arthur was so much fitter than Douglas, because he easily kept ahead. In fact, Arthur had to make sure he didn't run so fast as to catch up with Douglas again from behind!

It probably wasn't the best strategy to go running round and round the plane, which is what they did for a lap and a half before Arthur remembered one of his Escape Strategies from his childhood, which had been very effective. So he paused long enough to open the cargo bay hatch, jumped inside, waved at Douglas and then hid within. He plastered himself against the inside of the cargo bay, right next to the door. Douglas came heaving in, puffing and sweating and using words that Arthur had only ever heard pronounced in an Australian accent before, and blundered straight into the midst of the packing boxes. He fell over them, screaming blue murder, as Arthur ducked outside, slammed the hatch closed and locked it.

Douglas shrieked something very rude, very horrible and also possibly physically impossible at Arthur through the hatch, but the gist of it was 'let me out and I will do bad things to you'.

"See, that would be a bad idea, Douglas," said Arthur reasonably, "And I think you mean ' _or_ I will do bad things to you', which is what Dad used to say when me and Mum had to trick him into the potting shed when he was very drunk. And you're not very drunk or even a little bit drunk, and I know that for a fact, but you're also not entirely sober, I would say, so I'm going to let you sit there and have a bit of a think about things, all right?"

Douglas said some more vile things.

"All right, Douglas," said Arthur in a soothing tone, which was also puzzled, "Though I'm almost certain getting my tongue out that way won't work because the tongue bone isn't connected to the tail bone at all. Sit tight. I'll just get Mum."

That turned out to be easier said than done because, as soon as Arthur got back into GERTI, he had to duck his mother's shoe that came flying out of nowhere. It hit him in the chest instead of the face, which was a good thing, because his mum wore shoes with thick heels and that probably would have hurt a lot.

"Are you all right, Mum?" he asked, "Only Douglas seems a bit peaky and..."

Carolyn screamed and threw a plate at him, then charged down the aisle at him wielding the fire extinguisher. She was running unevenly, though, having used one of her shoes as a projectile, so Arthur had time to implement Dad's In a Drunk Rage Inside the House escape strategy. This involved running to the bathroom door, opening it at the last minute and stepping neatly aside so that the parent – back then Gordon, in this case Carolyn – barrelled into the little room.

Arthur slammed the door shut again, really hard, so that the door would jam closed the way it did whenever a passenger slammed it too hard (which usually necessitated Martin getting a screwdriver and coming down to unjam it again, and he'd complain that it wasn't really the job for a Captain, though Arthur thought it was brilliant anyway, because fixing things with screwdrivers was a real, genuine, bone fide _MacGyver_ kind of thing to do, and he wished he could _fix_ things with screwdrivers instead of making a _hash of things_ with screwdrivers, which is how GERTI's toilet door had developed a tendency to jam in the first place).

And that, eventually, led him to wonder if Martin was feeling a bit odd and peaky the way Douglas and his mum were, so he crept quietly up to the flight deck and listened.

Through the closed door - closed and locked, Arthur realised - he could hear Martin heaving in angry, angry sobs, only it sounded mostly like he was saying 'It's not fair, it's not fair, I work so hard all the time and it's not fair, and it's because you're an idiot, Martin Crieff. I make a mess of things all the time, but I _try so hard_ but it doesn’t help because _I. Am. An. Idiot_." There were a few odd thumps, and then more angry sobbing.

"Skip?"

Martin made some kind of strangled ragey noise, a bit like Douglas's roar only squeakier.

"It's okay Skip. Everything's going to be fine. You just sit tight and we'll wait till everyone feels a bit better."

"I should just take off and fly GERTI into a mountain," said Martin through the door, snarling and miserable.

"But you can't do that, Skip," Arthur pointed out, "We can't take off without clearance, and everyone in the tower is out playing rugby." At about this time, Arthur noticed that his mother was banging on the loo door and shouting unpleasant things and rattling the hinges, but it was well jammed, so that was okay.

"Sod clearance," snarled Martin.

"We can't sod clearance, Skip," said Arthur, "Those are the rules and you love the rules. That's why you're such a good Captain. Douglas is brilliant too, but he's brilliant at other things. He's not so brilliant with the rules."

"No. He isn't, is he?" Martin's voice was a bit snakey now.

"Which is probably why he isn't the Captain." Arthur was getting the hang of this. Even as a boy he'd learned to engage his father (whether locked in the potting shed, the loo or the garage, in discussions of this nature, talking about all the stuff that Gordon was good at that everybody else wasn't. It calmed him down, at least until he fell asleep from being so drunk or he sobered up).

"No. _I'm_ the Captain. _I_ am. I've got a _hat_."

"It's a terrific hat," noted Arthur, "It's got ever so much braid on it."

"That's the proper amount of braid for a Captain," said Martin in a surly, dangerous voice.

"Especially a good Captain like you, who knows every single rule."

"I do know all the rules. I'm excellent at rules." There was a sigh. "I'm just shit at everything else. Stupid stupid stupid..."

There was that thumping sound again.

"Are you hitting your head on the instrument panel, Skip?"

"Sod off."

"Because you shouldn’t do that. It might damage the controls and I'm pretty sure that's against the rules."

The thumping stopped.

Arthur popped his head out of GERTI’s main door to check the air field, and saw the Fitton rugby scrum coming his way, so he thought he’d just close the door again until they went away. They shouted a lot, but Arthur had grown up with a champion shouter, so he didn't let it bother him much.

After a while, Mum stopped yelling, but Arthur didn't try to get Martin to unjam the door _just ye_ t. His dad had played possum more than once, and it had only taken Carolyn's first black eye from opening the door to soon to learn to wait a good long while for the all-clear.

Whatever was going on, it seemed to have put every single person in Fitton in a right tizzy, so Arthur just sat at a window seat - which wasn't as fun as having a window seat when they were flying, because he only had a view of the airfield and not clouds and tiny little cities far below like tiny toys or people in a model railway diorama. It was more like the view from a bus, only they weren't actually going anywhere and there wasn't any traffic so he couldn't even play Yellow Car, even on his own.

Eventually, though, the rugby match settled down and everyone limped in an embarrassed way back to the tower. Arthur thought it was very lucky indeed that nobody had been badly hurt.

Arthur tapped on the door to the flight deck. "Are you feeling better now, Skip?"

"I'm fine." Martin's voice was mumbly and a bit choked up.

"I'm glad. You did really well, Skip. Everyone's been a bit odd, but you stuck to the rules like you're so brilliant at, and kept us all safe." 

"I... did, didn't I?"

"Yes you did. Um. Skip. Could you do the other thing you're brilliant at now, and get your screwdriver? Mum had a bit of a turn and I had to lock her in the loo.

When Carolyn was released from the bathroom, she didn't call Arthur a stupid boy or a clot or anything. She just gave him a big hug and said, "I'm so sorry, Arthur dear. I don't know what came over me." And she kissed his cheek and patted his back as he hugged her and she didn't cry exactly, but it made him feel bad.

"It's okay, Mum," he said, "Everyone went a bit odd, but it's over now, and nobody got hurt, and that's the main thing."

"It's not the main thing," she said, "Though it is an important thing. You managed everything very well, Arthur. Now, where is Douglas?"

"I had to shut him in the cargo bay," said Arthur, "I'll just go fetch him."

A few minutes later, Arthur returned with a dishevelled and sheepish Douglas in tow.

"Does anyone know what happened?" Douglas asked.

"I think everyone just had a _really stressful_ morning," said Arthur.

"We're just lucky," said his mother, "That you have such a lovely temperament then."

"Dad used to say I was an infuriating, spineless idiot."

"That's because your father never realised how brave you always were in dealing with his temper." Then, just as Arthur started to feel a little, well, _emotional_ about that, Carolyn snapped back into her old self. "So if we are all done with having our meltdowns, minor and major, we should be on our way."

And before too long, they were.

Arthur hummed to himself as he made the tea and coffee, and thought how good it was that he'd taken that course in Understanding People in Ipswich to supplement his upbringing in what his Mum called his Advanced Course in Managing Gordon Shappey's Anger.

It had been very helpful today, and Arthur _loved_ to be helpful.


End file.
